


The Choice

by siren_call



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Blood, Fallen Hero: Retribution Spoilers, Gun Violence, Pre-sidestep, Sleep Deprivation, Strangulation, Violence, but no one dies!, light stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23444638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siren_call/pseuds/siren_call
Summary: What will you choose? Will you live to regret it?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	The Choice

**Author's Note:**

> did I finish writing the fight scene? or did the fight scene finish me?

You wouldn't be able to say how long you've been standing here. Staring at the desserts through the smudged glass door of the freezer. Could be two minutes, could be twenty. It was around two am on this uncomfortably hot night when you walked in here but you're not sure what time it is now.

The only thing that you are sure of is that the finalists are rainbow and cookies & cream. 

The cookies & cream have little cookie pieces that you discovered that you really like a couple weeks ago, but the fun mascot of the rainbow seems to beckon you, the spectrum of colors blending together when your eyes slide out of focus.

The tinny radio in the convenient store is tuned to a station that's playing looping easy listening music. The budget fluorescent lighting buzzes faintly overhead, one flickers occasionally, and you wonder, in a distant sort of way, if you have entered a liminal space. It's possible you need to sort out your sleep schedule.

You open the freezer door and the brisk air whispers over your face, the tubs are cold in your hands, but it doesn't seem to be helping you decide any quicker.

You are staring unblinkingly into the black lifeless eyes of the cartoon mascot on the rainbow ice cream when you hear it.

The intent before the voice. You step back until you're against the aisle behind you, hidden from the front of the store.

“Money. _Now_ ,” gun, raised.

 _Gun held up to the level of your head_ \- 

No, not your head. The head on the shoulders of the young teen behind the counter, they’re only a year younger than you are supposed to be. They are terrified.

_You are terrified. There’s five-_

No, there’s only two thieves and only one gun. 

You’ve gone up against worse odds.

You put the ice cream tubs on a shelf and move to the end of the aisle, silent. Your hoodie has been up since you entered the store and you pull the collar of your turtleneck up over the bridge of your nose to cover the lower half of your face.

At the end of the aisle you pause, the door is only a couple feet to your left, you know you’re silent, you could make it. If you chose to make a run for it.

The cashier is trembling trying to put the cash and cigarettes into the backpack, they are clumsy in their terror and the thieves are getting impatient. 

You chose not to run.

Red and black at the level of your eyes catch your attention, you take a bottle of cola off the shelf, a glass one. It flips easily over itself in your hands, as you weigh it up, weigh your options. The one with the gun seems fresh to this, plan already forming in your mind.

Your heart-rate picks up, the adrenaline before a fight is reassuring in its familiarity.

 _Fuck it_ , you step out from behind the isle and shout “ _Hey!_ ”

The armed thief turns his whole torso, including the hand with the gun, towards you and away from the cashier, like you knew he would. 

You have already thrown the bottle and it explodes on impact, opens up and scatters sugar coated glass, knocks the gun out of his grasp. It hits the floor and spins away and you're already running. 

Your knee lands in the second guy's chest, throwing him hard into the aisle behind him, packets and tins tumble off the shelf.

The first, nursing the hand that formerly held the gun, swings at you with his less dominant hand. You kick him in the solar plexus and he crashes into a display to the side of the counter, a tower of sunglasses landing on top of him and he’s down but not out. 

The second, still currently has the use of both his hands, and they are closed fist and coming for you. You dodge, spin on reflex, strike him under the ribs, kick him into the shelf opposite the one he was in before. 

You know he’s going to take out the knife and lunge at you so you duck, easily, as he slices open packets where your neck was. Contents spilling down onto the linoleum. You tackle him to the floor of the aisle and it only takes one hit to get him to stay down. You stand above him full of some wild, unnamed thing, heartbeat racing.

The first is finally managing to extract himself from the heap, so you move back to the front of the store. He‘s slow, fishes out his own larger knife and you’re grinning behind the black fabric.

You grab his wrist with one hand, put your other into his nose hard enough that it cracks, and he falls boneless back into the mess and everything becomes silent. A wet heat slowly drips down your knuckles. You have won.

The cashier is knees to chest behind the counter, shaking. You don't get too close.

“Are you ok?” because that's what you’re meant to ask. 

_No,_ is what you hear. 

You try to send them feelings of safety, of relief, but they just break apart against the wall of blinding fear. You’re not sure what those things feel like anyway. So you pull down the mask instead, show them your face, try to wear something reassuring instead. 

“You’ll be ok,” because that's what you’re meant to say. They just look up at you with big brown eyes, so scared. 

They aren’t ok so instead you tell them, “You’re going to make it out the other side of this.” You flip the knife you took from first so you’re holding the blade, hold it out to them to take, offer them the weapon of those that wanted to hurt them. 

You don't know how to say out loud what you want this to mean. 

_What you want this to mean to them? Or to yourself?_

They look at the knife for a long moment before they take it. 

Before a noise behind you startles them, and you look over your shoulder to watch a third larger man walk out of the bathroom. 

You yank up your mask, _how could you be so fucking stupid._

You stand in front of the cashier who gets under the counter to hide.

He is built, muscles just as strong as the walls around his mind. 

_Fuck._

You shake out your hands, ignore the ache of oncoming swelling, take up a stance, you haven’t had a proper fight since-

_You don’t know where the gun is._

He takes in your pulled up turtleneck, his guys out cold on the floor and drawls, “You want to play hero?”

“I just wanted my fucking rainbow ice cream you son of a bitch.” 

You see the gun on the ground when he does, and you lunge for it, kick it hard and it slides away and under the shelves. 

He strikes faster than you expected but you still turn and duck and kick him in the back of the knees. He buckles, but turns just as quick and you’re too close to avoid his fist and you catch it in the ribs. Punching the air from your lungs and you stagger back. He is up again, too quick. 

_Or are you just too slow?_

No.

 _You’re gasping under cold fluorescent lights, past a fractured rib, slow is not acceptable, if the unit does not meet directive standards it will be recycled_ -

**No.**

You straighten up, through the pain in your ribs and snarl, underneath the fabric so that it reaches your eyes, so that he can see.

He sneers at you, and you run at him, using a freezer box to kick off, you deliver a punch down across his face that sends him reeling and you are _alive_.

So you punch him again, and _again_. And you dodge and sidestep and punch him _harder_. 

Feel your knuckles open up, feel adrenaline rush to your head in exhilaration. 

And this is where you slip up. Literally, on the spilled guts of the cola bottle.

He has already grabbed you by your jacket front to slam you down onto the freezer boxes hard enough that you hear it crack. He wraps his gold ringed fingers around your neck, and you feel the cold caress of the freezer seeping into you as you struggle. You bring your forearm down to buckle his elbow and slam your forehead into his nose, he doesn't let go. Just straightens his arms and looks down at you, a warped smile on his cruel features, and he squeezes and-

And _How_ **_Dare HE._**

He recoils and you know at once that you couldn’t have spoken that, you couldn't get air past your throat for a noise let alone words. 

His smile is gone. He’s afraid now, afraid of what will happen if you get back up.

You always get back up.

You release your death grip on his wrist to pull your knife from your hoodie, flick it open and bury it into his guts. 

His hands vanish from your throat and you gasp down a wretched sound. 

Gripping the edge of the box you bring your legs up between you and launch him off. 

He’s flung backwards, clips the end of an aisle and goes down, spits out a curse, clutches a scarlet hand to his side. 

You get up, unhurriedly in a way you know unnerves him. You don't wipe the blood dripping down your forehead and that unnerves him too. His shields decay with the panic. You see yourself in his mind's eye, a dark silhouette looming above him back lit by the flickering fluorescent light above you.

Your breath pants out in half gasps, half growls, past the bruising in your throat. You’re not sure whose blood drips from your knuckles and off the blades drop point. 

He manages to stand only to receive your right hook to his jaw and he’s down once more. He doesn’t try standing again. Instead scrambles back towards the bathroom, leaving a fragmented red streak behind. 

He’s not fast enough. 

The cheap wooden door splinters as you kick him through it. You sink the knife into the door frame and stand over him, sprawled onto the dirty tile floor. You put a heel hard onto the side where you put your knife and he screams.

You feed him back his own fear, the terror of the cashier, feed him your own horror from somewhere dark and deep, until you see it consume him, until it’s up to his eyes. Then with a bloody hand you smash the back of his head into the tile. 

And it's over. It’s a mess, it’s-

_Five bloodied soldiers dead on the cold tiled floor of a gas station in desert Nevada, painting the walls red-_

No. It’s just three unconscious thieves in a convenient store. 

You take a deep breath through your aching throat, and pull the knife from the frame. The soft looping music of the radio drifts back into your awareness. Then exhaustion creeps back, you feel more tired than you were holding the ice cream. You can feel a headache forming at the base of your skull and you’d rather spend what little money you have on a smoke, or several.

Stepping over first on your way to the counter you pick one of the almost stolen cigarette packs and drop it by the register.

You’re opening your wallet to get your only twenty dollar note with red and aching hands when the cashier says. 

“Just take it,” they’re looking directly at you like you grew a second head, they're standing up now, white knuckling the knife you gave them, like an anchor, a lifeline. It’s the first thing you’ve heard them speak.

You check upstairs to make sure they're going to be ok. You’re startled to see they’re wondering the same of you. They're having a hard time processing the deadbeat mess that stood for half an hour in front of the frozen desserts with the brawler that just took down three guys and possibly saved their life.

_Was it really half an hour?_

“And don’t choose rainbow, my boss changed the dates. Take the cookies and cream instead” they say, voice no longer shaking. Cookies & cream is their favourite.

“Thanks,” your voice is almost unrecognisable, you’ll have a necklace of bruises for sure.

"No, thank you. I don't know what would've happened but you probably saved my life." _A hero_ , they think, _their_ hero. 

And you don't know what to say to that so you just thank them again and tell them they should probably call an ambulance for the guy bleeding over the bathroom floor. Then you take the cigarettes and the ice cream and you leave.

You go home, rest your split and swollen knuckles, hold the frozen tub against your violet throat and eat your dessert. 

It was a good choice. 

***

Marshal Charge stands in the Rangers Headquarters kitchen, arms crossed and staring at the tv mounted on the wall. 

“Chen, have you seen this?” she throws over her shoulder, eyes not leaving the screen.

Steel looks up from cutting fruit to see grainy footage showing a figure in black kicking a larger man into a convenient store shelf. Text rolls across the bottom of the screen that reads, “ _Citizen hero takes down 3 armed men in attempted robbery_.”

He continues with making breakfast, “we already deal with too many vigilantes.”

Anathema walks past him, “but this one’s weird,” she steals a strawberry to which Steel makes a face. 

The Marshal turns and looks back for the first time in a while, eyebrow raised.

Anathema just looks pleased that she’s hooked an audience, “I looked into it, the full security footage shows them staring at the frozen desserts for like 35 minutes before they take down 3 guys with what I believe to be a variety of martial arts. Their reflexes seem unnatural too,” she steals another strawberry and Steel frowns harder. 

“There's a point where the guy pulls down their mask to calm the cashier, but when the police questioned them all they would say was that they ‘couldn’t remember’ what the masked person looked like,” which is said sarcastically, her disbelief evident. “They just seem… interesting,” she finishes. 

Steel throws the strawberries into the blender before she can steal a third, “Los Diablos is interesting enough.” 

“Hmm,” comes the reply from the Marshal, a small smile hidden in the corner of her mouth as she watches the footage again. The figure appears to move faster than they should. Her smile grows wider.

**Author's Note:**

> As always I don't know what I'm doing yeehaw.


End file.
